The Easy Way
by HanayaS
Summary: Ficlet. Post 4x06/Countdown. Spoilers for Season 4. Audrey contemplates her identity and the choices she has had to make.


It was easier to be Lexie.

Audrey might be the person that she most wanted to be, might even be the most authentic version of herself, but for now she needed to be Lexie. She needed not to care what other people thought, what other people needed. Lexie wasn't unfeeling or selfish, she wanted to help the Troubled, but it wasn't the driving force in her life. Lexie was an open book in a lot of ways and she had a levity that Audrey hadn't experienced in a long time.

It was a strange feeling to be two people at once, to be able to switch between personas without too much thought. She could pick between two sets of memories and draw on two sets of very different life experiences. Lexie had experiences that Audrey Parker had never had, she'd held a lot of different jobs and lived in many different places, which could be just as useful as Audrey's Quantico training. That being said, it was challenging to be Lexie while living Audrey's life. At home and around town, being Lexie came naturally but being in the station, carrying a badge and gun and investigating the Troubles meant that her inner Audrey sometimes fought to come out.

Fortunately in a town like Haven, most folks were accustomed to people suddenly looking or behaving differently, so although many still called her Audrey, they began to treat her more like Lexie. As the days and weeks wore on, no one seemed to expect her to be Audrey anymore, no one except for Nathan.

Being Lexie wasn't easy on him, that much was apparent. At times it even seemed unfair. He wanted so badly to have Audrey back and to fix the mistake that he'd made. She knew it weighed heavily on him. He didn't like Lexie and he did a poor job of hiding that fact. As he had said, he wanted her to be Audrey again, and now with the knowledge that she was there, lurking under the surface, he seemed increasingly frustrated by her refusal to be Audrey. However she wouldn't relent, she wouldn't even discuss it with him. She'd told him she loved him, she'd told him that she had made her choice and now they both just had to live with it. She was Lexie now.

Of course, the only thing that seemed to irritate Nathan more than Lexie's mere presence was the fact that Lexie and Duke got along so well. Nathan and Duke may have both loved Audrey, but only one of them was willing to accept Lexie. It probably didn't hurt that Lexie and Duke had a lot more in common than Lexie and Nathan did. They both had a great appreciation for all alcoholic beverages, a more flexible approach to rules (and laws) and were more focused on the enjoyment of life than the weight of life's responsibilities. It wasn't a romantic relationship, as Duke's focus had shifted to the other new girl in town, but it was a comfortable friendship. Duke had a much easier time accepting Audrey as Lexie, and though he had tried, couldn't get Nathan to do the same.

It was true that she missed being Audrey sometimes, missed her boring wardrobe and her corny jokes. Mostly she missed how Audrey and Nathan had been together. They were still partners, they still worked together well enough, but it wasn't the same. It had been hard enough to connect with him the first time around, but he'd closed himself off so much to Lexie that it was as though the trust in their relationship was gone. It took them longer to work through things, to get on the same page, and it was a lot harder to communicate. When she'd first met Nathan, when she'd been Audrey, he seemed to have this heavy burden, weighing him down. She realized later that it wasn't so much a burden but a self-imposed isolation, a separation from the world as a result of his Trouble. Not being able to feel in a physical sense had caused him to close himself off emotionally as well. Now, he was even more isolated than before, even more burdened than before. There was a darkness and a sadness inside of him that she hadn't seen before, that she never wanted him to have. Lexie thought it made him seem kind of sexy and mysterious, a kind of bad boy vibe, but liked her men more badass than brooding. Thinking about him as Audrey just made her heart break.

Sometimes at night, alone in her apartment, she allowed herself to be Audrey. She broke down and let herself remember and feel all the things that made her Audrey. She ate cupcakes and read cheesy novels. She reminisced about old cases from Haven and from before. She thought about Duke and how their friendship had changed, how they could still hang out when she was Lexie, but they weren't close like they had been before- Lexie didn't have friendships like that. Most of all, she thought about Nathan. How mad she was that he had put her in this position. Audrey had made her choice, she was prepared to lose 27 years, to lose what they had, in order to keep him safe and to keep the troubles at bay. She also thought about how much she loved him and how difficult it was to be apart. It killed her to have him so close and to see him hurting so badly and to have to stay away. Sometimes when she was with him as Lexie, it was like Audrey was screaming to come out, to touch him, to comfort him. It was as though she hadn't realized the depth of her love for him until she'd been forced to let him go and in these moments when she could be Audrey, she mourned for the life together that they'd lost. When morning came, however, Audrey went away again and Lexie returned because Lexie was who she needed to be.

Like Audrey, Lexie may not have had an easy life, but she wasn't weighed down by her past. She still smiled, she still laughed. She wanted to help with the Troubles, but didn't feel the weight of that responsibility. She didn't have Audrey's sense of connection to Haven and its residents, and she certainly didn't have Audrey's emotional baggage. The idea of having been other people was just plain weird, so Lexie didn't think about it. She got along with Nathan well enough and learned to enjoy hanging at the Grey Gull. Lexie had been a lot of different things in a lot of different places, and she'd always been able to adapt, to be flexible.

Lexie could make herself at home in Haven, she could do her job, she could help the Troubled, but Lexie would never love Nathan.

It was easier to be Lexie.


End file.
